


a long-distance love affair

by amusewithaview



Series: Said the Hatter with a sigh, "It's always Tumblr time." [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fluff, Psychic Bond, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Soulmates, Soul Bond, Soulmates, Telepathic Bond, Telepathic Sex, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 19:00:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6483322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started as a headache, blooming just behind her right ear.  Then it spread across the top of her head and down to the base of her skull before sweeping forward to strike at her eyes, leaving her whimpering in pain on the couch with a cold compress on her forehead and a pillow on top of <i>that</i>.  Gradually, the pain receded into a strange, almost buzzing sensation that was not unlike the pins-and-needles of a sleeping limb, only this was her <i>brain</i>.  That faded quickly, leaving her pain-free for the first time in hours and - and -</p><p>It felt like someone was <i>hugging</i> her <i>mind</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a long-distance love affair

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: this is of the “psychic connection soulmates” stripe rather than the “first words written on each others’ body” kind. I realize I’m most known for the one, but I DO DABBLE in others. *sigh* Just. Just go with it. WARNING: includes allusions to mutual masturbation and, um… mental sex? Psychic link sex? I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DESCRIBE IT, UGH.

Darcy spent most of her twelfth year torn between anticipation and anxiety.  She was  _yay close_  to finding out, once and for all, if her soulmate was older than her or younger.  She couldn’t decide which she wanted more: to know immediately that they were out there and feel them tangibly in her mind, or to have more time to grow up and know herself, get her shit together, before they received a window into her and who she was.

“Sweetness,” her mother told her, gathering Darcy’s hands and folding them between her own, “whether you want it one way or the other, it’s out of your hands.  Let it be, this is one thing you’re not gonna get any control over, no matter how much you fret.”

It was good advice, but Darcy wasn’t really capable of following it.  She fretted, she worried, she obsessed more than a little.  A good half of her school projects that year were soulmate oriented - teacher allowing, of course.  Many middle school teachers banned the topic, but there were always a few that allowed it (Darcy had heard a rumor that the teachers had made up a rotating schedule but discounted it as heresy).  She wrote three papers on ‘mates whose age differences were so large that they barely had time to know each other before death parted them, then two on reincarnation theories.  She aced them all, but not even the grades could make her feel any better.

Time marched on and her birthday loomed larger and larger on the horizon until, one day, five days before her birthday… she felt it.

It started as a headache, blooming just behind her right ear.  Then it spread across the top of her head and down to the base of her skull before sweeping forward to strike at her eyes, leaving her whimpering in pain on the couch with a cold compress on her forehead and a pillow on top of  _that_.  Gradually, the pain receded into a strange, almost buzzing sensation that was not unlike the pins-and-needles of a sleeping limb, only this was her  _brain_.  That faded quickly, leaving her pain-free for the first time in hours and - and -

It felt like someone was  _hugging_  her  _mind_.

Darcy poked at this odd sensation, trying to quantify it.  She got a general impression of being _shushed_  and then…  _held tighter?_  She stopped trying to weigh the sensation against past memories and relaxed into it and yup, that was definitely a hug.  She was being hugged.   _Mentally_.  Her soulmate was hugging her and  _this was so cool!_

She didn’t quite  _try_  to mentally “hug back”, the bond was more instinctive than that.  She just hugged whoever - she was getting a vaguely masculine sense? Maybe? - back and giggled, beaming fit to break her face (luckily for her nearly-teen dignity, it was still covered by a pillow).

Having her soulmate in the back of her head was mostly awesome, with a few moments of mind-numbing terror.  Her soulmate, whoever he was (she was almost certain it was a “he”) was pretty calm, overall, and had a great sense of humor.  He was amused by a lot of things, and she got the impression that if they ever met he’d probably be amused by her too, but in an affectionate sort of way.

Darcy was pretty calm too, but her relative zen was not broken up by moments of spine-tingling exhilaration and mind-numbing terror.  She got used to feeling low-key anxious anytime her soulmate got too excited because whatever he did in his day-to-day (and he was older than her, though she wasn’t sure by how much, so his day-to-day was probably not high school) was dangerous as all get out.

Years passed like this, her sending him positive feelings when he was down and him doing the same.  Her feeling worried and nervous whenever he was clearly in danger, but holding it away so he wouldn’t sense too much of it.  She knew he shielded her as well, mostly because sometimes she could tell he’d had sex (he was, somehow, even  _MORE_   _zen_  when he was post-coital), so it followed that if he could block her from  _that_  then he was blocking her from other stuff as well.

Then, one day, in the middle of her Chem exam, she felt his exhilaration morph into despair so sharp and intense that she actually cried out.

Her professor glared at her, but Darcy was too shocked and frightened to explain and barely took time to grab her bag before fleeing the room.  She dashed for the nearest bathroom and sobbed brokenly, crying all the tears that her soulmate wouldn’t -  _couldn’t_ , if she was reading him right, because whatever he’d been trying to do still needed to be done.  It took her a good half hour to calm down, time during which she felt her soulmate’s anger and pain punctuated with small spikes of  _satisfaction_  so sharp that they almost hurt.  She clutched her bag to her chest and weathered the storm, biding her time till she could manage to get back to her apartment.

Eventually she made it back and worked on an apology email for her professor while waiting for her soulmate to be out of danger.  Darcy felt exhaustion replace his satisfaction and… she had no idea what to do.  She reached out with tentative mental fingers and wrapped him in the biggest hug she could.  She didn’t try to project happiness or it’ll-get-better-soon, she just tried to be with him, to hold him, to lend whatever wordless support she could.  She didn’t know, for certain, what was going on (she could guess though, because that had been  _grief_  under the anger and pain), but she tried to  _be there_ as best she could.

She felt him pulling into himself and she let him go, not willing to force her way in if she wasn’t wanted, but then he hesitated.  Darcy held perfectly still, both mentally and physically, not even breathing while she waited for him to make his choice.  After a moment she got the vague impression of a sigh and he relaxed into her.  Darcy proceeded to cuddle him mercilessly, staying awake long past when she should have considering she had three more exams the next day, in order to keep up her silent support.

…

It was almost funny, in hindsight, that her failed chem lab (the professor chose to be the worst kind of asshole about her soulmate-related emergency) led to her being entangled in superhero craziness.  Funny in a grim sort of way.

Jane was cool, Jane was actually pretty normal for a woman whose soulmate was a Viking god.  After all was said and done and they were packing for parts yet-to-be-determined, Darcy asked her about it.

“So.  Deity?”

“It actually explains quite a bit,” Jane had said philosophically.  Then, at Darcy’s quizzical look, “Imagine teen hormones augmented by a soulmate who regularly goes into a berserker state  _recreationally_.”

“Holy shit,” Darcy breathed.  “Doc, I gotta say, you’re surprisingly normal.”

“ _Thank you,_ ” she said sincerely.  “I do try.”

What was  _really_  funny about the whole situation (less in a this-is-amusing way and more in a level-of-schaudenfreude-that-Darcy-would-rather-not-admit-to way) was that New Mexico was the first time that it was  _Darcy_  who was in the real line of fire.   _Darcy_  was the one feeling adrenaline and fear and, no matter how hard she tried not to broadcast it, her soulmate could feel it.

And boy, did he  _freak the hell out._ Calmly, as was his wont, but he was mentally present and  _with her_  in a way that both of them tried to avoid most of the time.  It was hard to keep up, for one thing, and it was borderline invasion of privacy for another.  Darcy didn’t try to actively block him out, half because she didn’t want to worry him more and half because part of her (a part she would not like to own to having) was vindictively pleased.  See how you like it, that part said, it’s frightening, isn’t it?  To wonder if you’ll ever get to see them?  To know they’re in trouble and you can’t really help?

She tried to disguise that part of her, she really did, but he was so omnipresent in the days immediately post-Thor that it slipped.  Darcy could feel him examining the emotion, prodding it, testing it out, and then he did something that surprised her: he hugged her and sent an apology.

Well, now she felt like a jackass.  Darcy turned to Jane, told her, “I need a soulmate moment,” and then left for her room in their new shared flat.  Once cloistered, she focused on organizing her thoughts.  It was… really hard to have a decent discussion completely without words.  She tried, though.  She tried to communicate her frustration, her fear and worry, and - ultimately - her sorrow.  She apologized in turn and it became a massive orgy of mental hugs and comforting brain-touches until, when she rejoined Jane, the scientist took one look at her and told her flatly, “No brainsex on the clock.”

Darcy refrained from explaining because A) it would take too long and B) the actual explanation was more embarrassing than the presumed ‘brainsex.’

The next year saw her and Jane heading to Tromso just in time for an alien invasion that left both her and her soulmate holding each other close mentally, watching the Avengers save the world.  Darcy felt her ‘mate’s mounting determination and resigned herself to more mind-numbing terror and heart-stopping exhilaration.  She didn’t know, precisely, what he was getting from her, but he wrapped her in the tightest hug she could imagine and didn’t let go until long after the portal had closed and every attacking alien had been shot from the sky.

The less said about the incident with the Dark Elves, the better.  Darcy would just like to go on record saying that the only thing scarier than her boss souped up with an alien superweapon was seeing Thor’s eyes go red-and-black because whatever that superweapon was, it apparently sunk _soul-deep_  into a person when it latched on.

Her soulmate, in a fit of oddly calm panic, proceeded to mentally hover for almost a month after that.  He didn’t interfere, just sort of parked himself staying present and with her until Darcy got used to it and stopped really noticing.  It was then that their relationship… shifted.  It was probably inevitable, considering that they were both (presumably) healthy and able-bodied young people with functional libidos who shared brain (and soul) space.  Honestly, it was mostly Darcy’s fault: she’d grown so used to his presence that it wasn’t registering anymore.

She had already busted out her trusty vibrator and was halfway there when she felt  _it_.   _It_  being a full-body caress much like the hugs they’d shared, only  _full-body_ and with  _intent_.  She froze in surprise and felt something like a tentative query come from her soulmate.  Darcy considered: how did she feel about this?  Carefully, she tried to actively send him the same feeling, and nearly arched off the bed as the sensation returned doubled and tripled and  _multiplied_  a hundredfold.

This was new, and awesome, and  _why the fuck hadn’t they done this before?_

The next morning Jane took one look at her, grimaced, and said, “Okay, I take it back,  _this_  is you post brainsex and  _I never need to see this again._ ”

Scant months later and Darcy was woken out of a sound sleep by the tell-tale thrum of her ‘mate’s low-key anticipation and excitement.

“Oh,” she said, staring at the ceiling and feeling anxiety welling up within her like vomit.  “This is gonna suck.”

At first the timing seemed too coincidental: her ‘mate feeling all those feelings just when Captain America gets arrested?  The odds were weird but not that weird, there had been stranger coincidences.  Then Darcy re-evauated within the context of strange that her life had become since the advent of Viking gods and alien superweapons.  At that point she just hoped (and felt strange for doing so) that her ‘mate was one of the ones holding guns on Captain America and not the other way around.  Realistically, there was only one way that that could end and - hours later - she was proven right when half the world’s covert intelligence was dropped onto the web.

“We need to be gone, like, yesterday,” Darcy told Jane, Thor, Erik, and Ian with as much calm as she could muster - which wasn’t much considering her soulmate was still swinging wildly between concern, excitement, happiness, and fear.  It was relatively easy to get their lives packed up, considerably less so to schlep them all somewhere safe and off the radars of the crazies.

And there were a lot of crazies coming out of the woodwork post-SHIELD reveal.  All the shadow organizations looking to take a piece of the SHIELD pie, all of the other organizations SHIELD had held down leaping up as soon as the opportunity presented itself, every two-bit crackpot and conspiracy theorist whipping up the masses into mindless terror - there was danger all around and Darcy needed to get them through it.  Somehow.

Two weeks, three scuffles with Hydra-remnants, one kidnapping attempt by some assholes calling themselves “AIM”, and another by some people who wouldn’t shut up about “rings”, and they were all safely ensconced in the lovely (if frighteningly advanced) bosom of Stark’s Tower.

It was… an adjustment for her and for her soulmate.  He’d spent the past couple of weeks waffling between dealing with his own shit and hovering at her metaphorical elbow, radiating quiet concern while she dealt with all of the madness that being a Named Personage and Target in HYDRA’s files could bring.  It wasn’t even like she was a high-level target, but her proximity to the upper levels had painted a larger target on her back than she’d been prepared for.  It sucked, but his presence was more of a boon than anything else.  Mostly because his version of ‘concerned hovering’ included a lot of hugs and, when appropriate, ‘brainsex’, so she wasn’t really complaining.

She’d heard it said that, when you were close enough, there was an odd sort of echo-effect in the soulmate bond, as if you were hearing them doubly through the bond and through their proximity.  Or something like that.  She called bullshit on that, though it made for a poetic notion, because she had not been prepared in the least on the day that it finally happened.

It was a normal day, and Darcy knew that people always said that but it really was what passed for a normal day for her.  She got up, made coffee, got ready for work, went down the eighteen or so floors required to get from her apartment to Jane’s lab, and worked.  Eventually, after enough time had passed, she went to grab lunch and - because Jane rarely remembered to stock her own groceries and the communal kitchen was closer than Darcy’s own - headed for the common floor Stark kept as a sort of public/private area for Avengers and Avengers attaches.  This was where she ran into a full, or nearly-so, kitchen.

“Whoa,” she said, nonplussed.  There were… a lot of famous fighters in the room.  At a glance, she spotted Thor, Tony, Rhodey, Rhodey’s new BFF and (apparently) soulmate Carol, as well as the Black Widow (call me “Nat”), Captain America, and that dude he was palling around with - the one with the wings.

“Hey, short stack,” Tony called.  “Go grab your scientist, we’ve got company.”

“Yeah, but she’s got science,” she replied on autopilot, “and science trumps you any day in Janey’s book.”

“My lady is a formidable woman,” Thor said appreciatively, though the light of mischief in his eyes and the slanting look he was shooting at the pouting Iron Man made her feel like she must have just stepped into the middle of something.

Darcy ignored them and headed for the fridge and the pre-made sandwiches that Pepper kept stocked.  “Please tell me you didn’t eat all of the avocado and pumpernickel,” she said to Rhodey.

“I could, but I would be lying,” he told her.

“Asshat,” she muttered, hip-checking Captain America out of the way.  Or attempting to, at any rate.

“Hello,” he said, staring down at her and looking somewhat bemused.  “You are?”

“Hungry,” she said pointedly, then sighed.  “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Rogers -  _ugh_ ,” she wrinkled her nose.  “I can’t call you that.  Can I call you Steven?  That’s better, it doesn’t leave me feeling like I need to ask if it’s been a wonderful day in your neighborhood.”

“Is that a euphemism?” he asked.

“It’s a reference, Cap,” the Falcon said.

Darcy spun to face him and

their

       eyes

 _locked_.

“Oh,” she gasped and then she was lunging forward and he was opening his arms to her and they came together easy as breathing.  She was wrapped around him and she could smell him and she could feel him both within and without and he was warm and real and present and hers.

“Found you,” he whispered, head bent down so his cheek was pressed to hers and his face was buried in her hair.

“You being a hero-type sure explains a lot,” Darcy said back, considering for a scant second before she jumped up a little, confident that he would catch her, so that she could wrap her legs around him and press even closer.  If she could have climbed inside him in a non-creepy, non-serial killer sort of way, she would have.

“You two know each other?” Rhodey asked.

“You could say that,” Sam responded, chuckling.  “She’s my soulmate,” he lifted his head to say it, then ducked back down again, nuzzling Darcy’s temple.  “Been lookin’ for you a long while, sweetheart.”

Darcy snuggled closer, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

**Author's Note:**

> Darcy/Sam being adorable and sexy and fluffy 5ever, okay? Okay.


End file.
